Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Denied a birth certificate and SSN# by her fundamentalist parents

by in Fundamentalism

(I got in this letter last night, and thought I’d share it here.)
Hey John, I hope your novel is going well. I saw your latest post about it and I sympathize with the feeling of trying to juggle several big activities.

I thought you might find this case interesting. Another story of patriarchal fundamentalism gone wrong, and this time it’s happening to one of my close friends, Alecia. She left home at 18 to escape the oppressive and manipulative environment. But she has no ID and no way to prove her citizenship. Her parents, who never got her a birth certificate, SSN, or anything, are refusing to help unless she agrees to their unreasonable terms (basically, they’re using her civil rights as leverage in an attempt to control her). They’re whining about how she betrayed them by moving out.

She made the video below to ask for help with figuring out what to do, because she’s tried a lot of ways to get documentation and it isn’t working. I figure the more publicity she can get, the sooner and easier she can get the legal help she needs.
Alecia’s mother, Lisa, writes a blog she calls The Pennington Point, featuring “lots of tips on Parenthood, Mothering, Home and Faith.” She titled the post she wrote about Alecia running away from home The Hardest Post I Ever Wrote.* In it she (of course) cast herself as the victim:
On Wednesday, September 24th my life was changed forever. My 18 year old daughter left home. She gave us no warning, no signs that it was… [Read more…] about Denied a birth certificate and SSN# by her fundamentalist parents

Christians and Spank Culture: How and Why to Stop It

by Jennifer C. Martin in Christian Issues

Between the “cool pope” speaking out in favor of physical discipline and Fifty Shades of Grey, spanking is back in the news.

Though I come from an evangelical background, I admire the pope, and so found his latest comments frustrating.

I don’t spank my children. (Full disclosure: my children are still quite young—but so far, so good.)

My relatives all spank their children with reckless impunity. To them I know it seems so simple: the actions of the child who has disobeyed is immediately met with the power and authority of their mighty hand, by which the child immediately learns that he or she has done wrong.

But I don’t discipline my kids that way. And people judge me for that. One relative mentioned casually to my husband, “You guys can get away with not spanking, because your kids listen—but my kid won’t do anything unless she’s spanked.”

I wanted to argue; I wanted to answer, “That’s because you’ve trained your child to be completely unresponsive to any form of discipline other than spanking. Your child knows that when you simply ask her to do something, you don’t mean it—you only mean it when you spank. (And no, my kids do not always listen.)”

The idea that not spanking is some sort of easy, overly lenient parental response is baffling to me. It would be much simpler to smack my kids every time they did something wrong (especially when I’m angry at them) than it is to consistently treat them like human beings deserving of the same respect that I believe I’m… [Read more…] about Christians and Spank Culture: How and Why to Stop It

Progressive Christianity won't give you measles

by in Christian Issues

Last week evangelical blogger Samuel James wrote a post in which he compared the anti-vaccine movement’s rejection of medical authority and expertise with progressive Christianity’s rejection of church authority and theological expertise.

I’m sympathetic with James’ warnings against anti-intellectualism and rejection of authority, but I’m disturbed that he only identifies those tendencies in groups he disagrees with. Such characteristics cut across cultural and theological boundaries, and while the progressive Christian movement has shortcomings that merit examination, the intellectual problems of evangelical Christianity are far more pervasive.

Evangelicalism has always had an uneasy relationship with intellectual pursuits. There’s a very good reason Mark Noll titled his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and not The Scandal of the Progressive Christian Mind. There’s a very good reason we aren’t reading about measles outbreaks in mainline Christian churches, but yet the anti-vaccine movement continues to find a foothold in conservative religious communities.

Samuel James’ own evangelical background and his ties to the Southern Baptist Convention undermine virtually every word he writes in critique of progressive Christianity. Southern Baptists widely reject scientific expertise, especially in the form of evolutionary biology, and widely reject the consensus of mainstream biblical scholarship when it comes to biblical issues such as the inerrancy… [Read more…] about Progressive Christianity won't give you measles

A Navy SEAL's life-changing secret

by in LGBT, Movie Reviews

Christopher Beck is a former Navy SEAL who, in the summer of 2013, came out as Kristin Beck — a transgender woman. Beck’s story garnered wide attention through an Anderson Cooper special and a book chronicling her journey, Warrior Princess.

This past fall CNN premiered a documentary about her life, Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story, which was recently released on DVD.

Lady Valor presents an honest, humorous and heartbreaking account of Kristin’s struggles. Kristin is someone who doesn’t have it all figured out, but is nevertheless negotiating life as best she can and is finding hope along the way. Addressing questions about her new identity she says:

It’s hard to explain. People ask me about that, they say “I don’t really understand transgender, and you know, can you explain it to me?” And the only thing I can tell them is I don’t really know what transgender is either. I don’t know — I mean, I know what it is, it’s this — but I don’t know where it comes from or why. It’s not an environmental thing that was pushed on me or some food I ate and suddenly I broke out with “transgender.”

I’m not a gay man. I’m not a drag queen. I am not maybe total dude and not total feminine, I’m not totally female. I’m not really — I think I’m living more in that gray world, and I’m still trying to figure it out, and maybe that’s what everybody else is trying to do too — they’re trying to figure me out. They’re like “I don’t know what that is,” which… [Read more…] about A Navy SEAL's life-changing secret

Strachan & Fischer’s Big Gay Slip’N Slide

by in Christian Issues

One of the canards of the anti-LGBT industry is the tired argument that accepting LGBT equality will lead us down the slippery slope of moral corruption. Capitulate when it comes to gay marriage and just around the corner we’ll be facing, in words from the film Ghostbusters, “a disaster of biblical proportions … real wrath of God type stuff … Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! … Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes … The dead rising from the grave! … Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!”

In a recent episode of his Focal Point radio program, conservative Christian blowhard Bryan Fischer puts it this way:

One of the things we’ve talked about on this program is that once the threshold of man-woman marriage is crossed, once we cross that threshold, where we said there are other sexual unions that are permissible outside of the union … there is no logical place to stop. … Once there is some kind of endorsement of homosexual behavior then they’re going to move on from there. … when ground is given to the homosexual lobby, when their agenda is catered to, surrendered to, capitulated to, they’re not happy with that, they’re not satisfied with that, now they’re already pressing in to transgender rights, special rights for transgenders. … They’re pressing on to incest: I read you that story a couple weeks ago that’s now been mainlined in The New Yorker magazine [New York… [Read more…] about Strachan & Fischer’s Big Gay Slip’N Slide

Can Christians and Muslims be friends?

by in Book Reviews, Christian Issues, Islam

Can Christians and Muslims be friends? For Mennonite missionary David Shenk, the answer is not only a resounding yes, but a resounding imperative that we must diligently pursue and cultivate such friendships.

In his recent book Christian. Muslim. Friend: Twelve Paths to Real Relationship (Herald Press, $14.99), Shenk writes from the perspective that “every Muslim should have a Christian friend and every Christian should have a Muslim friend.”

He goes on to describe twelve paths to reach that goal, each of which is the subject of a chapter in the book:
… we live with integrity. We keep our identity clear. We cultivate respect. We develop trust. We dialogue about our differences. We practice hospitality. We answer the questions. We confront distortions. We consider the choice between the hijrah [the journey from Mecca to Medina] and the cross. We seek peace and pursue it. We partner with the person of peace. We commend Christ.
Shenk speaks from experience — he has spent over 50 years involved with Christian missions in Somalia, Kenya, the United States and around the world. He describes this book as “a collection of stories about my journey of meeting Muslims and greeting Muslims.” That is partly true, but Shenk is being modest. The stories of his interactions with Muslims offer profound insights into the nuances of interfaith relationships.

Shenk is forthright in his exploration of Christian/Muslim relationships, never shirking difficult topics. He… [Read more…] about Can Christians and Muslims be friends?

Does "The Moral Arc" bend towards truth and justice?

by in Book Reviews

Michael Shermer is an optimist. The outspoken skeptic and author of the new book, The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom (Henry Holt, $32), sees humanity – and indeed all of life – as progressing on a steady and incremental trek toward a better moral, social, political, technological and economic existence.

Shermer acknowledges the many challenges to his optimism: our history is plagued by violence, hatred, ignorance, superstition and oppression. But through his hefty and ambitious volume, Shermer argues that the only reliable way to conquer such evils is through science and reason. For Shermer, the Scientific Revolution and the dawning of the Age of Reason and Enlightenment stand as the pivotal moments in all of history: these are the events that have catapulted us forward toward an ever brighter future. It is only through the “scientific understanding of the causes of evil and the rational application of the political, economic, and legal forces” that we are able to “bend that arc ever upward.”

According to Shermer, the greatest threat to science and free inquiry are authority and dogmatism, and these negative forces are primarily manifested in religion, most significantly in the form of Christianity. He argues that religion’s tribalistic and xenophobic roots establish it as inherently opposed to true moral progress, and that we must free ourselves from these limitations:
Never again should we allow ourselves to be… [Read more…] about Does "The Moral Arc" bend towards truth and justice?

Must "American Sniper" Chris Kyle be seen as immoral?

by in Christian Issues

This is in response to so much that we’re now seeing on the Internet–and maybe especially amongst progressive Christian bloggers (such as Ben Corey)—about how “American Sniper” Chris Kyle must, by virtue of having done his job, be immoral.

It would have been wrong for Chris Kyle to have ON HIS OWN killed people. That would be murder. He, and his fellow soldiers, whether they were snipers or truck drivers, put the needs of others ahead of their own lives, and that is the very essence of both love and heroism. And we rightly honor heroes.

That of course is not the same thing as saying that all wars are just. Leaders make mistakes, and citizens have the responsibility to question the morality or need for any war. One could argue that the United States made either a moral or practical mistake by entering any number of wars. But the heroism of the individual soldiers who served in those wars remains exactly the same.

Non-violent means of political change is great, and should always be pursued. But non-violence is not a moral absolute. Gandhi is a hero, for standing up to British imperialism non-violently. But non-violence did nothing but encourage Hitler.

Without war, without the sacrifice of many, many, heroic soldiers, slavery would be legal in the Confederate States of America, and Auschwitz would still be in operation. To refuse to fight those wars would have been immoral.

Finally, out of necessity, soldiers don’t have the luxury of… [Read more…] about Must "American Sniper" Chris Kyle be seen as immoral?

Eliminating evangelical double-speak about salvation

by Chuck Queen in Christian Issues, Christian Spirituality

Mega-church pastor, best-selling author, and evangelical icon, Rev. Rick Warren wrote the foreword to a 2008 book authored by Rabbi David J. Wolpe titled, Why Faith Matters. Rev. Warren had this to say about Rabbi Wolpe,
The closer I get to David Wolpe, the more I am impressed by this man of faith.  … his unique contribution of experiences has given him a credible platform from which he presents the case that faith in God truly matters … .

Regardless of where you are in your own personal faith journey, I’m certain that his profound insights in this book will stimulate your thinking and even touch your soul about the reality of God in fresh and surprising ways.
Of course, Rabbi Wolpe’s “faith in God” is not faith in Jesus, which Warren holds as essential for salvation.

In 2012, Mr. Warren was interviewed by ABC’s Jake Tapper, who asked if he believed that Jesus is the only way to heaven. Warren responded,
I do believe that. I believe that because Jesus said it. See, I don’t set myself as an authority. Jesus said “I am the way.” He didn’t say I’m one of the ways; he said “I am the way. I’m the truth. And I’m the way.” I’m betting my life that Jesus wasn’t a liar.
Tapper next observed that Warren was involved in a lot of Interfaith dialogue with friends of other faiths. He asked Warren,
Why would a benevolent God tell those friends of yours who are not evangelical Christians, “I’m sorry you don’t get to go to heaven?”
Here’s how Warren sidestepped that vital… [Read more…] about Eliminating evangelical double-speak about salvation

"American Sniper" misses the mark

by in Movie Reviews

American Sniper, Clint Eastwood’s biopic about Navy SEAL Chris Kyle – “the most lethal sniper in US history” – has broken box office records and garnered six Academy Award nominations. Eastwood’s directing, Bradley Cooper’s acting and Jason Hall’s screenwriting have all been widely recognized as exemplary.

War films are often judged by their realism and accuracy: the claustrophobic intensity of Das Boot, the epic violence of Saving Private Ryan’s beach assault, the daring nighttime ambush of bin Laden’s compound in Zero Dark Thirty. For its battle scenes alone, American Sniper undoubtedly merits inclusion in that list – not just for the accuracy of military minutiae, but also for powerfully conveying the feeling of fighting in the streets of Iraq.

Intercut with these intense combat scenes, American Sniper presents Kyle’s story in an earnestly straightforward manner: a down-and-out cowboy signs up for the military in order to defend America, excels at his job (killing people) beyond all expectations, wrestles with the psychological trauma of war, overcomes that trauma by helping other veterans learn to shoot, and is finally celebrated as a hero.

But while every film must necessarily edit and shape its narrative into a coherent and engaging structure, American Sniper does so in a particularly pernicious way. As we are lured in by the adrenaline-fueled intensity of the combat scenes, we also are subjected… [Read more…] about "American Sniper" misses the mark